


Those Who Fear Life

by subluxate



Category: The Departed
Genre: F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subluxate/pseuds/subluxate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sean Dignam has lost his wife and gone back to work managing undercover Massachusetts State Police within the space of a week. When he has to pick a new trooper to go undercover in Frank Costello's organization, there's only one viable option, but it's going to hit him hard. His own background, coupled with the present, will lead to a decision he always knew he'd make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=smallfandombang)[**smallfandombang**](http://www.dreamwidth.org/profile?user=smallfandombang)'s first round. Thanks to [](http://sarcasticsra.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**sarcasticsra**](http://sarcasticsra.dreamwidth.org/) and [](http://geena.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**geena**](http://geena.dreamwidth.org/) for their, as always, wonderful beta jobs. Many, many thanks to [](http://five-steps-back.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**five_steps_back**](http://five-steps-back.dreamwidth.org/) for her amazing artwork and allowing me to incorporate it in the fic.

  


**Chapter One**  


Mary finally dies on a Thursday in July.

Sean isn’t there when it happens. He’s left her long enough to get lunch; the hospice nurse swore up and down that she would last that long, and by the time he gets the call on the cell they can’t really afford, it’s too late for him to get home before she’s gone. When he gets there and his wife is gone entirely, and sure she’s not suffering but he should have fucking _been there_ , he gets damn close to punching that nurse, woman or not. For once in his fucking life, with someone besides Mary he holds back on his anger, and it’s only because of her that he does, and instead he dials Queenan before any of their family.

Queenan doesn’t answer, so he calls the house and gets _his_ wife instead. “Sean,” she says when she picks up, “how’s Mary doing?” The Queenans have been there for them this whole time, Mrs. Queenan bringing food and sitting with Mary when he just needs a fucking break from watching his wife die, and if anyone besides him should have been here for her, it’s them.

“Mary’s gone,” he says into the phone, and the words bounce right back at him like he’s on speaker or something. “She—” He swears. “I wasn’t fucking here.”

“I’ll be right over,” she says, her voice soft. “Oliver’s in meetings today about the trainees, but I’ll get through quickly.”

Yeah. The job, the trainees, sucking some kids into the whole fucking mess of their unit. Sean should be there for some of that. He’s about to tell her not to interrupt when he stops himself. “I’m not going anywhere.”

When he sets the receiver on the cradle—and he should get a fucking medal for not slamming it through the fucking drywall—he turns back to Mary. That bitch nurse left him alone with her, she said to let him say goodbye but he thinks because she saw that look when he got home and realized he was too late.

The thing is, he doesn’t fucking _know_ how to say goodbye. Not to Mary, anyway. He’s been saying goodbye his whole life, but not to her. She was a Southie kid like him, got in almost as much trouble right beside him, but a pretty girl got out of a shitload more than a boy, even if she was a mouthy brat too. They’d been talking kids before she got sick, and for awhile during too, when it looked like she’d be okay. But the bills kept coming in, not so much her medical because Staties get fucking decent coverage there, but their mortgage, the new car that he finally sold and kept the beater when it looked like she wouldn’t get back to driving or teaching second grade or any-fucking-thing, everything else.

“Honey, this was a bitch move,” he says finally, and he walks to the bed to sit beside her. The rails are already down, and he sits beside her bony hip, taking her hand. She’s still warm. “Didn’t we agree this wasn’t how it was going down?”

Mary, of course, doesn’t answer. If she could, she’d probably point out that was about four years ago, the last time they agreed, and they both shut up about it since, so he should fucking shut up about it now.

She never let anyone say she couldn’t hold her own against him or anyone else. He didn’t ever have to say it for her; the second someone tried, she’d be cutting in, not letting them finish, just to prove how fucking wrong they were about her, but that’s not going to fucking happen again. She won’t even get to tell him to shut the fuck up again.

Christ, he’s still got to call her parents, his brother if he feels like dealing with that. Maybe he’ll get Mrs. Queenan to do it, if he wants to take the pussy route.

He did undercover for years, though. He shouldn’t be pussying out about calling his fucking brother when Mary just died. For one thing, she’d have kicked his ass to hell and back for it. She still might come back to do it. Not much would surprise him with her.

“I don’t know where the fuck you went, but you better know I’m still thinking about you.” He squeezes her hand, gentle as can be. The IV’s gone, too. All that shit except the fucking hospital bed is gone. “The Queenans are coming. Then I’ll call your parents, even if you’d fucking hate me for it, you got it?” He swallows. “Honey, if I could have beaten this shit with my bare hands, I would have for you. Any-fucking-thing, I’d do it.” And that would have gotten his ass kicked, too, for suggesting she couldn’t do it herself, even though she obviously couldn’t. He could do it even less.

“Sergeant,” the fucking nurse says behind him, “you have a—”

Mrs. Queenan, amazing woman she is, just pushes past the nurse and into the room. “Oh, Mary,” she says sadly, and he’s so fucking glad she didn’t just say his name that his heart squeezes. “You sweet girl.” It takes a special kind of person to see through someone like Mary, and Mrs. Queenan is just that kind. Captain Queenan’s the same. Sean always did know the idea of opposites attracting is bullshit.

“I have to call her parents,” he says. “Will you—”

“Of course.” She sits on the other side of his wife and strokes back her short hair from her face, and Sean gets up, going to hunt down the damn address book because his in-laws moved six months ago and he doesn’t know their new number. Part of that’s because Mary didn’t want him to call them, part of it’s because he didn’t want to deal with them, part of it’s because he was too fucking busy with their dying daughter who they barely showed up to see, even after they knew that was what was happening.

If he thinks about it, he doesn’t know why he’s bothering besides that it means he doesn’t have to call his brother yet. There are the kids they grew up with, the ones they’re still friends with, and he’ll get to them, but it makes more sense to him that he get this shit over with. At least there are only really her relatives.

Speaking of friends, now that she’s dead, maybe one of the women will tell him who Mary fucked before they were together so he can beat the fuck out of the bastard for giving her HPV and fucking murdering her. She never would, never let the others, said it wouldn’t make a fucking difference and he’d lose his job if he got turned in, but now he can claim grief. It’ll even be true. Besides, he knows his captain will cover his ass on it this one time, what with the reason.

He’s jerked out of those thoughts when her father answers the phone, sounding bleary, and Sean wonders if he’s already been drinking or just woke up. Last he heard, the man was working third somewhere, but it wouldn’t be the first time the bastard got himself fired for some reason, booze or fighting on the job or some shit. “Yeah?”

“Keith, Mary died.”

There’s silence a minute before he says, “She still at home?”

“Yeah. You gonna tell Deb?”

“She walked out. Two weeks ago. Said she’d call you.”

It’s about fucking time those two separated. It’s happened before, but it’s never stuck more than a few days. Two weeks is Deb’s record. “She fucking didn’t.” Who the fuck doesn’t keep in touch when her daughter is fucking dying? “She say where she was going?”

Keith grunts. “One of the kids, probably.”

Jesus, that means calling all Mary’s brothers and sisters until he finds Deb if he wants to put that much effort into it, and it’s not like her family is small. “You have any idea which _one_ , Keith?”

“I did, I’d fucking tell you, kid.” There’s the mean bastard Sean knows and despises. “I’m coming to see my daughter.”

“You set foot in my house drunk, I’ll throw you the fuck out,” Sean warns.

“Fucking try it.”

“I’ve taken you before, old man.” Keith never hit Mary, not really. Her brothers got the worst of that. But he was a mean bastard, one of the kinds who could and would break down his family with his words and his poison, and Sean got involved one time he started on Mary, broke his nose and blackened his eye, and Keith mostly left his middle girl alone after that. One of the only times Mary didn’t light into him for getting in the middle of something she might’ve handled on her own, mostly because they both knew she couldn’t against Keith.

“Haven’t been drinking anyway.” Sean figures that’s a lie. If it isn’t, Keith’s going to start soon. “I’ll get there when I can.”

“Mary’s _dead_ , you bastard, and you can’t get your ass over here?” This shit is why Sean didn’t want to do this.

“I said, I’ll get there,” Keith growls, and the fuck is that supposed to do to Sean, scare him?

Sean can’t be fucked to have a real fight with him, not right now, so he jabs to disconnect the line and turns the address book’s pages to the first of Mary’s siblings that he likes all right, one of her kid sisters their group would keep an eye on, let tag along. Christy sounds tired when she picks up the phone, and since Sean knows she’s got a new baby, he has to curse himself for picking her. “Christy, she’s gone.”

“Sean?”

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Little over an hour ago. You know where Deb is?”

“I think Mike’s stuck with her this time. Need me to call?” God, even her little sister’s holding it together fine. Mary being sick so long got them all ready for this.

“Yeah. I had to deal with your bastard father already.”

Christy makes a displeased sound. “I just put Robbie down, but I’ll be over. How’re you doing?”

“Mary’s dead, Christy. How do you think I’m doing?”

“That’s what I thought. Soon as I call some of the others, I’ll get Robbie up and come on over, all right?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Their house is going to be fucking crowded if even just her sisters and their littler kids show up, not to mention their friends, but he’ll deal with it. He figures they’ve got a right to see her, too, even if it’s just going to piss him off. At least it probably won’t be all of Mary’s siblings at first; Christy knows which ones he can stand for any real time, and she knows how to put them off.

When he hangs up this time, he has to really think about calling his brother. Brian might be good about this, or he might make Sean want to shoot him. As long as the Queenans are around, he’ll hold off on that, so he picks up the fucking phone again and calls his brother at work, that fucking boring nine-to-five job he has. Something to do with computers.

“Brian Dignam.”

Sean goes through it again, and his brother is decent: “I’ll be there soon, kid.”

That’s different from the hateful, attempted put-down from Keith. Brian’s older, eleven months and a few days, and sometimes he’s a dick about it. Sometimes, like now, he makes an effort at being a decent older brother. Not that Sean makes much of an effort to be a decent younger brother himself most of the time. “Thanks, Brian.”

“If it was Kathy, you’d come,” Brian points out, and he’s right there. “I won’t be long. Want me to call Kathy?”

“She might make the Flynns more tolerable.”

“By what, an inch?”

Yeah, Brian does remember growing up around that family. “Yeah, call her.”

“As soon as I do, I’ll leave here.”

“Yeah,” and it hits him again, his wife’s gone and he’s just bone tired and about to deal with her family and has to call their friends and he’s got almost no fucking _time_ for a decent goodbye. That shit earlier hardly counts. Mrs. Queenan might clear the room for him later, though.

Captain Queenan gets to his house just as he’s about to dial a friend, Meghan, one who has the numbers for everyone else and will take over for him. His captain gives him a long look before asking, “Do you still keep the whiskey in the same place?”

Sean just nods. It hasn’t been touched in the last eight months. He knew damn well that if he started he wouldn’t be able to stop, not while watching her go. The most he had was a couple of beers on her worst days, when she finally had enough morphine in her to put her out for a couple of hours and he could get away from watching her struggle so hard. Struggling wasn’t the Mary he knew for most of their lives. That Mary fought and kicked ass and _won_ , fuck everything else, but this ate her away and reduced her to fucking _struggling_ and out of every-fucking-thing Sean’s seen in his life, that was the hardest, harder even than anything when he worked undercover, harder than witnessing a murder. This murdered _her_. So he got away, sitting out on the porch with those fucking beers, and tried not to focus on what was happening right behind him.

Queenan brings him a tumbler a minute later, maybe just over a finger of whiskey in it, and Sean takes it. His hands are still dead steady, he’s clamped down so tight, and the whiskey burns its way down his throat. It’s good.

“Christy and Brian are getting here soon.”

“Good. That’s good.” Queenan turns back to the bed. “Deb and Keith?”

“No fucking clue,” and if he sounds bitter, he figures he deserves to. “Christy’s hunting Deb down. Keith’s a prick, so who fucking knows.”

Later, Christy comes, Robbie in her arms, and Sean can’t fucking look at the baby. Kathy gets to his house right before Brian, and then it’s most of the Flynns, Erin, Brendan, Janie, Carrie, Mike with Deb in tow, Kevin, and their friends are mixed in there somewhere. It gets too much to handle, all the fucking _sympathy_ he doesn’t fucking want, not now, not fucking _ever_ , and he escapes when Mrs. Queenan gives him the nod, into the other bedroom where he can demolish the drywall and bloody his knuckles.

 _That_ feels fucking good. Fucking _real_.


	2. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter Two

  


**Chapter Two**  


Sean’s back at work the day after Mary’s funeral. He hasn’t been in much in weeks, and now Queenan’s not even asking questions, just handing over a stack of trainee files. He doesn’t need directions on what he’s doing. He’s done it enough times.

Most of these kids won’t work for them, not with Costello. They’ll stick out in that part of Boston, wrong names, wrong color, that kind of shit. They’ve got others they need to handle, too, but Costello’s the big one. They can get him, his organization, and the city will have that space pretty clean for a while. It takes time to get as big, as powerful, as Costello, thank fucking God—fuck, took _that_ bastard forty years—and if someone’s got to build up to that, the state police might be able to stop it before it gets too huge.

But first, they have to take down Costello.

Only one real possibility catches his eye. He’ll have the accent, maybe the savvy, for it. Costigan might be a wild card, but he’s got the family background for it. Uncle worked for Costello, kid has his own expulsion for violence under his belt, there’s a fucking stupid cousin barely worth busting working the drug trade down there, but the kid has that North Shore breeding too, the way to play nice with people above him if he has to. Mommy Winchester must’ve slummed it to get with Daddy Costigan.

He sets that file aside to look at more closely. They only need one right now to get in with Costello, and that’s the only project he’s focusing on for now. Queenan’s not coddling him or some shit—no matter how much he respects the man, loves him like a father, he might punch him for it if he was—it’s just that he’s been mostly out a fucking long time, almost four months, and actually needs briefings on some things. He’ll run his choice by Queenan, but he likes the looks of Costigan. They arrange it right, that past assault and battery is enough to work things in their favor to make it look good. Costigan’s just as fucking smart as a guy he glanced at last year, motherfucking Colin Sullivan, according to their educational histories, even smarter if Costigan’s SAT score can be believed.

Queenan’s call goes his way, and when they meet trainees before the kids finish training, before they even start testing and evaluations, Costigan is the only one they invite to sit.

They check in with Sullivan before him, one of Sean’s two possible candidates from the year before, and Sean didn’t like him then, doesn’t like him now. He’s a slimy little shit, almost smarmy, acting like he’s the smartest fucking person in the room while he still defers to Queenan, and it’s fucking difficult to resist smacking him for it. They’re fucking cops, they see through that pisspoor acting, and besides, Sean would like to see him up against Queenan in a battle of wits. He’s fucking glad they didn’t take Sullivan last year. This kid would just piss Costello off, get himself shot fucking fast. Instead, he’s a rank-climbing prick, going to kiss Ellerby’s ass until his lips fall off, and Ellerby’s going to eat that shit right up. Arrogant fucking dick loves getting that from his division. Part of why Sean’s sticking with the better captain, no matter what opportunities come up. Plus, he doesn’t have to deal with the goddamn FBI nearly as much here.

Then Costigan comes in, last of the trainees, and Sean’s a dick to the kid. More than usual, that is, picking at old wounds and insulting him and his family right out until he can see the kid wants to hit him. He thinks of telling it to Mary when he gets home and how she’ll laugh, and then his heart rips because no, she will _not_ fucking laugh. When they’re building to the offer, he gentles, pointing out that the kid’s smart, too smart to be a Statie. He’s been in that chair. He knows what works. He knows they nailed it when the kid slips from North Shore posh to Southie in his accent when Sean says something about how the kid’s done the hiding in Southie act before, and then Queenan asks, “For me,” and there it is, the thing that seals the deal every goddamn time they bring some poor kid who just needs some daddy figure to make happy into Queenan’s office for this kind of question. Sean should know. Fucking worked on him.

By the time Costigan is released from his jail sentence for assault (no battery; they’re not cruel enough to send him to prison to make it look even more real, just cruel enough to send him to try to take down Frank Costello without any help he knows about), Sean knows that Sullivan’s going to be higher up, think he’s so fucking special, all because he’s good at ass-kissing.

Sean never was. Neither was Mary. There’s a reason Mary was a teacher and Sean has no interest in getting anywhere that would take him out of running undercover cops.

He shakes his head after the kid finally leaves from signing the goddamn papers that are probably going to get him killed and says to Queenan, “Kid’s gonna wash out.”

“Give him a chance, Sean.” Queenan’s watching the door thoughtfully. “He might surprise you. You surprised me.”

Sean laughs, shaking his head. “I was nothing like that kid.”

“Not two-faced in the same way, but you still were, and you had a chip on your shoulder, too.”

“Captain, I was a fucking choir boy.”

“The Church wouldn’t _let_ you be a choir boy, Sean, and it had nothing to do with your singing abilities. You told Elizabeth and me the story.” Captain Queenan finally looks away from the door and at him to say, “I still don’t know about Sullivan.”

“I don’t like him,” Sean says bluntly. “Reminds me too much of Costello.”

That gets Queenan’s attention. Sean doesn’t say that shit lightly. He was in with Costello for four fucking years. Four years, three months, and a fucking day, and that last fucking day almost got a hole in his fucking head. So he knows Costello too well to say it like it’s fucking nothing. In his opinion, Costello’s worse than fucking Lucifer himself, and Queenan knows that damn well. “Is there a reason you say that?”

“I called Costigan a snake because he is. Sullivan’s ass-kissing slime, except he’s a smarmy shit who thinks he’s smarter than you and me combined and thinks he can control everyone around him.” No fucking way that shit’s controlling Sean, that’s for damn sure, and Queenan won’t let it happen, either.

“Play nice, Sean.”

“I played nice when he was in here.”

Queenan dryly says, “That crack about a twelve-year-old’s dick is going to make you into best friends.”

“Hey, I didn’t hit him. I played nice. Besides, no one likes a new kid who rises fast. They’re useless.”

“Which is where the twelve-year-old’s dick part came from, I take it.”

Sean grins. “See, Captain, this kind of thing is why I like you so much.”

Queenan reaches for a pen as he turns back to his desk. “Elizabeth wants you to come over for supper tonight if nothing comes up here.” Very nice, that non-question, like he wasn’t going to catch it.

“I’m okay, Captain.” Which is a flat-out fucking lie, but he doesn’t want the Queenans worrying about him like this, like he’s going to fucking fall apart if he’s alone too much. That, he won’t do.

“Come to supper and tell Elizabeth that.”

He can’t, of course, because Mrs. Queenan will see right through him if he can actually manage to lie to her face. Right now, he’s only managing with his captain because they’re not looking at each other. Stayed undercover with fucking Costello, and can’t get anything by the Queenans, especially not if he’s making eye contact. “Seven?”

“Good kid.” Sean chooses to believe he’s referring to the one they just conned into working undercover. “Take off early. Come at six.”

Sean laughs despite himself. “Just jinxed supper, Captain.” With that, he leaves for his own office, newly-signed paperwork tucked into the stack of trainee folders. He has an incredible amount of shit to shovel.

Sean calling it a jinx must have counter-jinxed it, some shit like that, because hardly fucking anything happens. He processes the paperwork for the new undercover, sets up part of the bonus to slip through to his accounts after the farce of a trial goes through and Costigan starts his sentence, and then moves on to all the other crap, expecting the phone to ring the whole fucking time, another undercover to need a meeting right fucking then or one to turn up dead, and it doesn’t at all, not once.


	3. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter Three

  


**Chapter Three**  


He met Mary in second grade, even though he should have known her sooner; her huge family lived right around the corner from his. Something about her, her eyes burning with fury a second-grader shouldn’t know, especially not a second-grade girl with her brown hair done in two messy braids most days. He tugged on one of her braids during recess the second day of school, and Mary spun around with her hand up to hit him.

Sean, being a tactless little shit way before it could ever fucking come in handy, asked, “How come your hair’s so ugly?”

Then Mary hit him in the shoulder, hard like she always could, and if they were twenty years older, she might’ve kissed him after. If they were in some stupid romantic comedy, anyway. Instead, she snapped at him, “My sister braids it for me, you jerk,” and her hand was still up like she might hit him again.

It told Sean pretty much all he wanted to know, though, how her family was probably like his. “I have a brother,” he said. “No sisters.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “I have four brothers,” she informed him, “and two little sisters, and three big sisters.”

Sean counted that up in his head and made a face. “Ew, ten of you.”

“We’re Catholic,” she said, like that explained everything.

“So’re we. Still only two of us. Mom said Dad’s too drunk most of the time to get it up so she doesn’t have to worry about any more little shits.”

Like he wanted it to, even if he didn’t know it at the time, that sent Mary into a fit of laughter, so hard she dropped to the asphalt. “I wish,” she gasped out, “I wish Dad was that drunk. Maybe he wouldn’t be such a jerk.”

Sean at least knew enough to know not touch that one with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole, even way back then, so he just said, “You wanna come hang out with me and my friends after school?” Girls were gross, but bad dads were grosser.

Mary just shrugged. “Okay.”

And after that, she came and hung out with Sean and Brian and a bunch of other kids from their neighborhood, older than the two of them and their age too, some even younger, all of them kids who didn’t want to go home to mothers who would scream at them or fathers who smelled like booze or having to make sandwiches for dinner for their younger brothers and sisters or whatever or just because their parents were dicks. They grew up in that group, all those kids taking care of each other, adopting younger ones as they went, until they were a horde of kids who could be total shits sometimes—Mary and Sean weren’t the only ones to get chased down by local cops more than once—but mostly watched out for each other, took care of the other kids and figured out how to hide bruises, learned to tape up cracked ribs and the fastest ways to stop bleeding noses or help blackened eyes, kept a close eye on all the little ones and kept them safe as best as they could.

He watched Mary grow, fascinated by how her body changed from the skinny, board-straight, board-flat girl he met in second grade to a girl with curves to her hips and boobs starting to show over just a summer, it seemed like. He didn’t know until she told him, a decade-plus after meeting, when they’d both gotten the hell out of the neighborhood and into college on scholarships they’d somehow managed to earn, that she watched him, too, getting strong even if he didn’t get a hell of a lot taller, starting to need to shave, and they were both fucking idiots because they started going with others, Sean taking a girl on dates for a few weeks, maybe long enough that they fucked a few times, before he got too restless and dropped her, Mary doing the same thing with guys, until they wised up sometime in the summer before their senior fucking year, after almost ten goddamn years of knowing each other, and Mary turned on him to demand, “You taking me to the fucking movies or what, Sean Dignam? Because if you’re not, start leaving me the fuck alone, okay?”

So he took her to a fucking movie, and then they went for a cheap meal at a McDonald’s because they couldn’t afford better, what with Sean saving for a car to get the fuck out of the neighborhood whenever he fucking wanted and Mary, always the smart one of the two of them, Mary planning for college. He never would have thought it until she informed him, “I’m gonna be a teacher. Little kids, not older shits. I want to help the kids before they get bad, maybe help get them away from shit parents like ours if I can,” and then it made complete fucking sense. “What about you? You can’t sling boxes forever.”

He didn’t know, until she asked, but as soon as she did, the answer was out before he thought. “I want to be a cop.”

“Put your mouth to good use,” she said, and pretty much the only way to shut her up without turning it into any kind of argument was to kiss her.

The last time Keith started on her was right before they started their freshman year of college, literally the fucking night before. He was out of a job, again, and the frequency made Sean wonder how the fuck he and Deb made their rent every month. He was going to be left with two sons to smack around, since Deb had another boy after Sean and Mary met, and two daughters to break down, and it seemed to Sean that he figured he’d do it to Mary one more time before she was out from under his roof. Sean was only there to haul Mary’s boxes out to the rattletrap car he’d managed to buy, a fifteen-year-old Chevy that he did his best to repair enough that it could get him around Boston without breaking down in the middle of a street. Most of what he knew about cars, he’d learned from the other kids they knew.

He didn’t know what set Keith off on her, if it was even anything. It could have been as stupid as how she had her hair while she finished packing. All Sean knew was that he came in from fitting a box into the trunk beside his own, and Mary was folding clothes so carefully that he knew it was all she could fucking do to not cry or say something back to Keith. She said something back, he’d just get worse, find more ammo. The first thing Sean heard from Keith, who was standing in her doorway, was, “You’re never going to fucking make it, you little bitch. You’re too fucking stupid. You leave here, and you’ll be fucking begging to get back under my roof in a month. You think I’ll let you? Think I’ll put up with your freeloading ass in my house, _my_ house, one more second after you leave? You get in that little bastard’s car tomorrow, Mary, and that’s the last fucking time, you hear me?”

“That little bastard’s right fucking here, Keith,” Sean snapped, the muscles of his arms bunching and unbunching.

nKeith ignored him, pretty par for the course. “You’ve been slutting it up for years, you little whore. Don’t know why the hell I put up with it all this time. Think I didn’t know? Think I was blind to you giving your cunt to any little shit who wanted it?”

Mary’s hands trembled as she set a precisely-folded sweater in a box, and Sean saw her biting her lip. He’d seen it before. He’d let it go those times, because Mary had to live with Keith, stay in his hellhouse, but if she had to keep hearing it that night, she’d be furious the next day, almost to the point of breaking one of his car windows, screaming at whoever did her orientation, probably picking a physical fight while she waited to register for classes, and no fucking way was Sean putting up with his girlfriend having to start college that way if he could do something. Fuck that Keith had seventy or more pounds on him, a lot of it in his beer gut, and fuck his six or seven inches; Sean had slung boxes and loaded trucks the last five years, since he started lying about his age so he’d have some money, and he had hard, strong muscles from it. He just pulled back and punched Keith in his left eye, hard as he could, knocking him back into the frame of Mary’s door. Then again, another jab, this one right into Keith’s nose, and Sean felt the crack of it under his fist. Fucking satisfying after what he knew Mary had to hear for years, but nowhere near as much as he wanted to do.

He turned to Mary like her bastard father wasn’t just inches away and bleeding from his nose, like the flesh around his eye wasn’t already puffing up, and asked, “How many more?”

She managed a smile for him, just him, the rare grateful ones she saved for him or sometimes Meghan or one of her other girlfriends. Almost always, though, they were for him. “Two. This and the books.”

Sean nodded and hauled up the box of books, shoving past Keith, who was standing in the hall and getting blood all over his shirt and cursing. “You’re coming with me tonight, so grab your pillow or whatever the fuck,” he said over his shoulder. “No fucking way you’re staying with this prick unless I stay too.”

“Like I want to stay here,” Mary muttered. She already had her pillow, he saw when he glanced, on top of the box she hadn’t even folded closed, and was right fucking behind him. “Your parents gonna give a shit?”

Sean shrugged. “What do I care? Besides, Dad’s on third shift, and Mom’s going to be smoking all night in front of the TV, so as long as we don’t interrupt whatever the fuck, Johnny Carson or whatever, she won’t give a fuck.”

They didn’t fuck in his bed that night, just lay facing each other and talking some, Mary wearing a pair of his boxers and a t-shirt of his and him in his own boxers, until she tucked her head down under his chin and he could smell her hair. Best way he’d fallen asleep in a long fucking time, maybe ever, and he hoped like all hell it wouldn’t be the last time he did. Stupid kid he was then, he didn’t know he’d get a mostly solid twelve years and five months of sleeping like that eventually, and another two and a half on a cot when she hurt too much for touch, sleeping in the room with her sick smell instead of her sweet, vital one, but still in that same room with her.


	4. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter Four

  


**Chapter Four**  


Fukui meets with them back behind a park, close to a museum, where no one she’s infiltrating would see her. She’s a small girl, slim, just under five feet, looks like she’s fifteen. Leah Fukui, actually twenty-seven, speaks fluent Japanese but studied Mandarin in college, and she’s after the child prostitution rings, has been forever. She gives them her report, her voice low and nervous, hands flitting around her waist and up to shoulder height a couple of times, and that’s what Sean focuses on. Queenan’s got her words, but Sean’s got her tone and her body language, and he’s shit scared for her. Fukui doesn’t spook easy. She hasn’t before. Sean knows what spooking means. He almost got shot when he was feeling spooky. He didn’t show it, not around Costello’s people, but he knew something was going on, and it almost happened before Queenan could get him the fuck out safely, into a good desk job.

“You want out?” Sean asks her, flat out, when they’re almost done. “We can pull you, make you disappear from them.”

“No,” she says, firm, no hesitation. “I’m getting close to something, Sergeant. I feel it.” Yeah, and he sees it. “Give me a couple more months to wrap this up, and I’ll be ready to get out.”

It’s not his call, ultimately, and Queenan usually defers to his undercover troopers on if they want to escape from their personal hells of what they’re seeing and knowing. “No more than three months,” Queenan tells her. “Three months from today, I’m pulling you, wrapped or not.”

“Yeah, Captain. I’ll be done before then.”

“You’re doing a great job,” he tells her.

She nods and walks off, her steps quick and light, like any kid in a park on a decent day. Sean watches her for a long minute before saying, “She’s getting spooky.”

“I saw it too.” Queenan sighs, and Sean glances at him. He looks _old_ , and it scares Sean. The captain doesn’t look old. Not when things are good. “She needs to get out, but she’s right about closing in. It’s a tough call, Sean.”

Sean just nods. It is. They’ve made it before, together, sometimes pulling an undercover who started getting spooky and sometimes trusting their undercover’s gut. Most times, when they trust their trooper’s gut, they’ve been lucky. One time, they weren’t, and Sean doesn’t like to think about that one time, especially not with Fukui. He likes her. She’s good. She’s quick on her feet, adjusts fast, holds her own, but if something’s spooking her, all that might not be enough.

She goes eight days with radio silence. The ninth day, when Sean’s starting to think she’s going to turn up with her throat cut or worse, she calls Queenan. Sean’s in his office, talking over Costigan, who’s done with his sentence and already starting to weasel his way into the underworld. He’s a fucking snake, slipping in there with his cousin the drug dealer already, and sure, he’s good, but they still need to touch base with each other, with Costigan soon too.

Queenan grins a second after he answers and says, “Wait one second. Sergeant Dignam needs to hear this, too.”

“I nailed them!” Fukui’s exultant. She’s got to be in a safe place if she’s this overjoyed. “Recorded their conversation—they don’t think I speak Japanese, Captain, because they’re blind idiots, but they’re _recorded_ talking about kids they’re bringing in a container to the Port of Boston, _here_. Twenty-three children, Captain! Recorded!” She’s downright _giddy_ , Sean thinks dizzily.

“Fukui, come in now,” Queenan instructs. “Don’t get seen coming, but get here as fast as you can. Dignam will meet you downstairs to pay your cab fare.” Fucking fine by him. She’s survived her spookiness, she’s fucking safe, she’ll be here soon and she’ll be good. “Bring the recording. We’ll get it into evidence, and I’ll call in an ADA to get the warrant now and to get the indictment as soon as we get those kids safe.”

“Yes sir. Less than an hour.” She hangs up, and Sean shakes his head, actually letting a grin steal across his face.

“She nailed ‘em,” he says admiringly.

“Yeah.” Queenan’s grinning right back. “Took her five years, but she did it. She’s a good kid.”

“Her, I knew it about. Jesus, maybe she’ll eat a real fucking meal now that she doesn’t have to keep looking so damn young.”

“That’s a good idea. Get her some food. A Coke, a sandwich, something like that, before you have to meet her.”

There’s no fucking way he’s meeting her with something from the vending machine. “We’ll talk about Costigan later?”

“Yeah,” Queenan agrees, already picking up his desk phone. “We got a success, Sean. Treasure it. Costigan will get us something, but it’s going to take a long, long time.”

The kid probably has no idea how long he’s in for. Sean could almost pity him.


	5. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter Five

  


**Chapter Five**  


Sean got asked differently than Costigan. He’d only applied to be a state trooper, hadn’t even known he was accepted to the academy. He thought getting asked to come down there was all part of the same fucking thing, that he’d get an interview with someone new, told to expect a call soon but that things looked his way. If he was real fucking lucky, he might get told that he was in, right there, get to expect to join the next class at the academy.

But no. Completely fucking different. He got directions up to Queenan’s office, except it wouldn’t be Queenan’s for another year and a half. Queenan was a lieutenant then, and the captain was Henley. Ken Henley, Sean would remember for years, had the order completely fucking backwards. Henley had the hardass role, when he was the one his undercovers should want to go to, should really want to please. Undercovers should respect their captain and his second-in-command, best way to keep their trust and their loyalty, but Sean never actually respected Henley. Henley gave him shit, bullied him into it the same way Sean bullied Costigan, but Queenan was the one Sean looked to, the one who was understanding and quiet and calm. Queenan asked him, the same gentle way that he asked every other one Sean had the motherfucking privilege of witnessing, “Do this. For me,” and just like that, he was had. If he didn’t love and respect the man so much, he’d call him a manipulative bastard.

He didn’t even think about his own wife, even though he caught glimpses of the cheap gold band on his finger while he signed the papers, already filled out with his name. He had a badge number, even, already; they’d been that confident that he’d agree.

“This isn’t the normal way of doing things,” Henley told him, “but it’s difficult to get things past Costello. You’re a kid from the neighborhood. You applied to the academy. Most cops, they want to look like cops, and if they can’t, they turn criminal. It’s going to look like you were rejected.”

“You’ll be a real cop if you do this,” Queenan interjected. “This is the sort of thing that makes for the real thing. You have the potential to truly be a cop. You’ve worked your way out, and you want South Boston improved. The only way it’s going to actually be improved, though, is if we get rid of Frank Costello.”

These two men feeding his ego, Queenan already more of a father than his own father ever was, had Sean filling out the few blanks they hadn’t already prepared, signing his agreement to do this for who knew how long. Mary in her first year of teaching, the two of them socking away every penny to buy a house as fast as possible and stop having to rent shithole apartments or even crappy little houses like the ones they’d grown up in, and he was doing this. A cop and a teacher might not get a great house, not on their salaries, but it would be theirs. After that, they’d buy decent rings, and then they could start talking kids. And he didn’t even fucking think about telling Mary until after he signed his life away, after he got his first briefing.

He stood on the T, keeping his balance so the women in their heels could hold onto the poles and the old people and pregnant ladies could have the seats, and it hit him.

He wasn’t going to have a fucking chance to start getting in with Costello, because Mary was just going to fucking kill him.

She didn’t actually do it, but she came fucking close. “You’re fucking _what_?” she demanded.

He swallowed, because when Mary got that burning look, someone usually got hurt. Only person in the world to actually scare him, so of course he fucking married her. “I agreed to go undercover investigating Costello and his people.”

Not really a surprise when Mary’s glass of milk got knocked over with how fast she got up and how her knee slammed into the kitchen table. He guessed it could be worse and got up to clean up the spill before following her into the hall.

“Mary, there’s a bonus,” he coaxed. “We’ll get some good money soon, into your account, and I’ll be working my way in with Costello. I’ll be safe.”

“What if you’re fucking not?” Mary spun on, him, her eyes blazing hotter than even when he pulled her hair that first time they talked. “What if you’re fucking _not_ okay, you stupid unthinking fucking _bastard_? What if something fucking happens to you, Sean? You even fucking think about that? Because ‘safe’ and ‘Costello’ do not belong in the same fucking _thought_ , asshole, and you _know that_!”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” and he tried to keep himself convincing for both their sakes.

She pressed her mouth shut before saying, “He’s a mean, _mean_ bastard. You know that, Sean. You know that sure as you know me. He gets even one hint that you’re not who you say you are, some washed-out wannabe cop, and he’ll make it fucking _hurt_ before you die.”

Then she spun on her heel and slammed the bedroom door behind her. First time Sean wound up sleeping on the couch. They’d have to get a new one when they could if this turned into a pattern.

They kept that ugly, sagging couch another four years.


	6. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter Six

  


**Chapter Six**  


Sean meets with some of their undercovers solo, mostly the ones he likes, like Fukui and Jensen, when he has to. Most of the time, the meetings are with Queenan and him, following their protocol, but there are some reasons sometimes where Queenan has to be out—prearranged vacations to visit Patrick down at Notre Dame, a family emergency, even a fucking dentist appointment. The times Sean knows Queenan will be unreachable—and Captain or Mrs. Queenan always make sure to let him know—he hopes like hell anyone who needs to meet or pass on something urgent or even get some fucking pats on the back will be the ones he can deal with easily.

So it’s his fucking luck to get a call from a hyped-up Costigan, one of the ones he _knows_ , knows in his gut, could be incredibly fucking good at what he does, but who is still a kid who keeps fucking panicking, one who might look steady but falls apart every second of every goddamn day. Makes Sean want to smack him to make him calm the fuck down, the way they used to way back whenever with hysterical women. Costigan’d deserve it, and it’d do more good than hitting someone who was panicking because she couldn’t do anything about the reason. Right now, he’s panicking with the best of them, and he can goddamn well do something about it.

“He’s not here,” Sean repeats into the phone, the second call of the day from the kid going just the same as the first ten minutes before. He absently rubs his wedding ring when he calls Costigan ‘princess’, something Mary would have punched him in the shoulder for calling her. Hell, she might’ve once. She packed a punch, too, so if she did because he did, he wouldn’t have done it again.

“I am getting on a fucking plane!” Costigan insists, so fucking hysterical that Sean gives. This isn’t his fucking job, not bringing him down from panic attacks; that’s his shrink’s job, one reason Costigan sees one.

“Get on the shuttle,” he instructs, “the one to Hertz. Do _not_ rent a car, you hear me, kid? You do, I will fucking follow you and kick your fucking ass. You wait there. I’ll come by and get you. You’ll know the car because it looks like shit, and you fucking follow my lead when I get there, or I’ll fucking hit you, that’s a fucking promise.”

“Yeah,” and the kid’s at least stopped shouting in Sean’s ear. Sean might have a temper on him—hell, ‘might’ is such an understatement that all three Queenans and everyone who knows him outside work would laugh like all hell, and Mary would have about died with it—but he knows his job, and he knows calming down his undercovers no matter how much they bug him. “Yeah, I will.”

“Good.” Sean hangs up and double-checks his pockets for his keys to the car he hasn’t replaced, the cell for the undercovers, the cell for people who exist, and then takes off.

Costigan looks like he might have really been about to take off. He’s got a knapsack bulging with shit slung over his shoulder, and his eyes—his eyes are wild, wide and panicked. His hair’s a fucking mess, but he throws his bag in the back, gets in the car after. Sean’s playing a fucking part right now, making it look like something other than picking up a panicked kid who’s barely older than a boy, so he reaches over and clasps the back of Costigan’s neck. Muscles are rope-tight, Christ. He can’t bring himself to kiss the kid or anything that might make it look beyond question, so he just pulls the kid over and touches their heads together. They’re probably not being watched, but if they are, it’s just some guy picking up his boyfriend. “We’re going somewhere safe, and you’re filling me in.”

“Yeah.” The kid’s words are shaky, but he sits back up and schools his breathing, and that’s good. That’s very fucking good.

The motel is shit, one of a bunch of identical ones near each other, but it doesn’t make a fucking difference. Important things are that Costigan won’t get seen with a cop or even just a guy when they’re checking in, and that it’s going to be safe. But to make it real enough, he gets a room with one bed and resists punching the smirking clerk. Costigan’s looking lost now, like he’s got no fucking clue, and he probably doesn’t. He’s still coming down from the adrenaline high of one of his professional panics.

In the room, Sean nods toward the bed. “Sit down.” For himself, he pulls out the chair from the cheap desk that’s bolted down even though it probably cost all of thirty bucks fifteen years ago and sits backward on it, straddling the seat with his arms crossed on the bar of the back. The kid drops like a stone, and Sean’s proud that Costigan’s still not letting it show besides in his eyes, the sound of his breath, probably the sound of his voice if he lets the kid start talking; his body isn’t fucking shaking, and his hands are completely fucking steady. That’s the most important thing. They could give him away easy otherwise.

"My wife and I were talking about kids." He’s just talking, letting the kid get fucking grounded, and he sees Costigan take a breath, than another, and then he gives one of those smartass grins that tells Dignam he’s getting grounded, he’s not going to fucking fly apart again like when he called from the airport.

"What, she get sick of you being a prick every time she asked you what you wanted for dinner?"

Dignam waits for the urge to hit him, and it doesn’t come. The words do, though, they rise quick and easy and natural. "No, but she did get sick of breathing. You know how it goes, kid, cancer eating them away until there’s nothing fucking left except their outsides."

Costigan’s on his feet in seconds, and he looks like he’s going to throw a punch. "You’re not fucking funny, Sergeant."

"I buried Mary the week before you signed to go undercover," Dignam says steadily, "and now sit the fuck down and give me your report."

Just like that, the fight’s out of Costigan. "Sorry. I’m sorry." He runs a hand through his hair, and his hand still isn’t shaking. The day Dignam sees that hand shake is the day Costigan is pulled out without a question, and he’ll do it without even Queenan’s okay if he has to. He sinks back down. "Okay."

“Good. Tell me what the fuck happened.”


	7. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter Seven

  


**Chapter Seven**  


Susan Dignam died when Sean was a freshman in college, his brother a year ahead of him and on a full scholarship at Harvard. Sean and Mary were at Suffolk, both with free money, her also tutoring for extra, him working food services for a disastrous month before he talked someone into letting him be in maintenance for his work-study money instead of being tempted to kill his fellow students four days a week. Brian found out from their aunt; their father couldn’t be bothered to call him. Sean hadn’t given his dorm name to his family, so Brian must have talked his way through the administration to find out, and he got called over to the phone with, “Dignam, you dick! Brother’s on the phone!”

That had to mean family problems, only reason Brian would bother him at college, especially with the trouble he’d made it to find him. When he grabbed the receiver from the guy holding it—Jeff, decent enough, good for verbal sparring sometimes and fine after they both went too far—he demanded, “What?”

“Mom died,” Brian said without preamble. “Aunt Terry called. She doesn’t know what happened.”

“Oh.” Sean stopped to process that. “Guess I should go to the funeral.”

Brian didn’t tell him to stop being a dick, nothing like that, just said, “I am. Sunday, our old church. Bring Mary if you want.”

Sean snorted. “Like fuck I’m going through that shit by myself.”

He let that pass, too, which sort of told Sean that Brian was affected by this for God knew what reason. “Nine. At least wear a suit or something.”

“If I have one.” He did. He just wasn’t letting his brother push him too much.

Funeral was a typical Catholic affair, by no means the first Sean had been to. Mary either. She whispered to him occasionally, reminded him at one point why he originally told her there was only him and Brian, and it took massive fucking effort to not burst out laughing during the funeral Mass for his mother’s eternal soul. The bitch was going to burn, but her family could comfort themselves. He could give less than a fuck.

His father lumbered up to him after the coffin was lowered. It looked decent enough; Sean would guess Aunt Terry and Uncle Gene paid for it. No way his parents could ever afford that and the plot and even a cheap headstone without help, and Brian didn’t have money to give their father. He might if he did. Sean wouldn’t give Richard Dignam piss if he was on fire. “Nice of you to bother to show up,” and that was the familiar cheap whiskey on his father’s breath. Already. Only eleven in the morning, and there it was. “Didn’t even fucking say goodbye to her before you left the house, little shit. Broke her heart.”

Sean didn’t bother resisting a roll of his eyes. “Why should I, so she could tell me I was a waste of fucking space, but there’d be my room in a house that fucking reeked of cheap booze and vomit and fucking cheap tobacco if I had to come back? I’m sure she was fucking broken up about it. Or you? Couldn’t say it to you, I left at ten and you were already passed out. Real fucking classy there, Rich.”

If his father took the swing he looked like he wanted to, Sean had no qualms about hitting him back. Self-defense. Instead, he snorted and said, “Don’t bother coming back this summer.”

“Summer classes,” he shot back. “No point in it.” Besides, he wasn’t bringing Mary back into that house. No fucking way when it was only Rich, who Sean couldn’t trust, and she wasn’t going back to Keith and Deb’s, she’d made that completely clear. Sean would do whatever he had to to help her stay out of that hellhole.

After Rich left, Mary asked, “How the fuck did we both get to college? How in hell did Brian get to fucking _Harvard_?”

“You know how,” Sean said, suddenly so fucking tired. “We all had each other to make up for the various waste of space shit parents.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Still do, some of us.”

He took that as a cue to kiss her, hard and deep, almost obscene considering it was right after his mother’s funeral and in a cemetery, but who gave a fuck.


	8. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter Eight

  


**Chapter Eight**  


He glares at her headstone. Even accounting for his old undercover bonus, he couldn’t afford anything great for her; most of that had gone to paying a huge chunk on the house they thought they’d raise kids in, the rest to half down on the car he had to sell to keep her home instead of hospitalized at the end. Still, it has her name, Mary Catherine Bridget Dignam, the dates, but nothing about being a sister or a daughter, not even a wife, "Beloved Teacher And Friend" instead. That was how she wanted to be identified, by who she really was, the things most important, and Sean could give her that much.

She also joked that she wanted something about being mouthy and hardheaded, but Mrs. Queenan wouldn’t ever let it happen even if Sean seriously considered it.

“Captain’s dead,” he tells her. “Captain Queenan, not Ellerby or some other useless kissass shit. The fucking rat, the rat’s responsible, and I fucking _know_ who it is.” He clenches his fists and bites the inside of his lip to keep from shouting what he knows to the whole fucking cemetery. No one else needs to know. When he’s calmed down, he says, “You remember Sullivan, I know you do. That slimy little shit I told you about, the one I wouldn’t even look at for working Costello because he was too much like the man. Jesus.” He can taste copper and salt and spits blood off to the side, onto another grave, but it’s not Mary’s and that’s all that matters. “His men. _His_ men were somehow fucking there when Queenan got killed. They didn’t do it—some of them are good cops—but there was no fucking reason for them to be there, and then that shit had the fucking balls to say Queenan was the rat for Costello in front of half of SIU.” His blood’s rushing again, that furious adrenaline flooding him, and he needs something to hit, just remembering the accusation against a newly-dead man, the cleanest true cop in history. “The rat, Mary, is Sullivan. I fucking know it. You know how I know?”

He shakes his head, tosses down the flowers. She liked carnations, white and pure, and he hunted those down for her. Doesn’t bother with the little plastic vase, gives them to her directly instead.

“One of my undercovers,” he says quietly, “one of my guys, a good kid, got shot. There were records of calling Brown, his cell to Brown’s, and Brown called me. I didn’t get the fucking message until too late, until the call about two troopers and one of Costello’s soldiers shot. Message was garbled, all static, but I got from Brown that Costigan was arresting someone. One fucking possibility, Mary.”

It takes him a minute to collect his thoughts again. “Billy Costigan, Mary. Costigan was a good kid. He spooked easy, but he stayed under. He did his job. He was so fucking close to taking the whole thing down, I just fucking knew, but after Queenan died, I got my ass suspended for slugging Sullivan—that temper, you know it, and Sullivan’s Ellerby’s pet—and I couldn’t take care of my guys. So Costigan fucked up. He went off on his own. I should’ve fucking been there, none of those shits could ever outshoot me, and we’d take down Sullivan and Barrigan together. Barrigan shooting Costigan, that’s the only part of Sullivan’s bullshit story I believe. We could’ve had our rat, and Sullivan—Sullivan talked big, but I think we could’ve broken him down, if we got him. No fucking chance now, honey.”

He knows, right fucking then, what he has to do. There is one, _one_ fucking way to make this right. He might’ve clashed with Costigan, but the kid was his to protect, to watch, and he got killed. He liked the kid, liked him too much for this to be allowed, and Costigan _trusted_ him. And Queenan…Queenan was like a father, goddammit. More than Rich ever was. Queenan dying, that’s fucked their other undercovers, that’s hurt Mrs. Queenan so bad that he doesn’t know how she’ll take it. Same as he’s been taking losing Mary, but she doesn’t have a distraction, anything to throw herself into—even Patrick, the poor kid, is away at school.

“You always did know,” he tells Mary, the ghost of a smile on his face, and leaves her.


	9. Those Who Fear Life, Chapter Nine

  


**Chapter Nine**  


Tracksuit, something that won’t let blood through or leave fibers. Booties over his shoes to hide his footprints. Gloves. Dirty gun, not the one he carries for work, not the legally registered one he keeps at home, but one that won’t ever be traced to him in any fucking way.

For a cop, Sullivan has shit locks. He also has a fucking palatial place, something that should’ve tipped off the department. Then again, with Sullivan reviewing cops’ financials and shit, easy to see how this slipped through the cracks. No way a clean cop could afford this, especially not one also paying for law school and without any family once his wife left.

Except, Sean guesses, Sullivan had Costello and Gwen, maybe French. They were his family, seems like, and maybe Gwen still is. The other two are finally gone, their space cleared in a way Sean didn’t prefer but that cleaned South Boston some. He would’ve liked life sentences for them, a needle if they could nail those two on federal charges, but this does the job, too.

He knew when Sullivan was fucking one of the shrinks, Madolyn Madden, when he married her. Whole department knew it, with the way he gloated about it all, especially when he found out that he was having a son. And Sean was at Costigan’s funeral. He saw Madden walk straight past Sullivan, her arms protecting that baby inside her from his poison.

That kid is not Sullivan’s. Sean wonders if he knows it. He wonders more if Sullivan knows the baby is Costigan’s.

Sullivan never was a cop.

He waits just out of sight of the door, behind the end of the kitchen counter. Sullivan’s the only one who could conceivably come in, the only one who would with his wife gone. The Beretta, 92FS, is comfortable in his hand, a good, heavy weight. Almost comforting. Safety’s off, suppressor’s on, ready to fire, and he steps out right after the door opens.

Sullivan’s been fucking grocery shopping. Christ. Responsible for the deaths of three good cops, one of them the best man Sean knew, another a brave kid, and he’s fucking grocery shopping. The fucking balls of the bastard. That all goes through Sean’s mind in the time it takes him to take aim.

“Okay,” Sullivan says, like he knew it was coming, and he probably did. He’s not completely fucking stupid.

It always surprises Sean, the sound a suppressed shot makes. No bang, more of a sharp hissing whistle, and the blood and brain matter spray out the back of Sullivan’s head just before he drops.

He had fucking bagels. Christ. _Bagels_.

Sean pulls on the beanie, pockets the Beretta, and steps over the body. One of the neighbors will find Sullivan. None of them comment on Sean getting into the elevator. No one’s going to remember his face.

Absolutely no guilt. That’s the thing Sean realizes is wrong about this. No guilt. Like putting down a rabid dog or some shit. It had to be done.

He only takes a few minutes to get rid of the evidence, not that it’s hard. He’s a cop. He knows what to do, how to not get caught.

When he gets back home, he goes for a pop from his fridge. Empty. Then he tries to think when the last time he ate was. Jesus.

He pockets his wallet and goes out to his car. He’ll do some grocery shopping and take food over to Mrs. Queenan’s. They can cook together and talk about the captain, and about Mary, and he’ll finally get to tell her about Costigan and what a strong kid he turned out to be.


	10. Artwork Links

  * [Book Cover](http://gonerunningaway.dreamwidth.org/4983.html) by [](http://five-steps-back.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**five_steps_back**](http://five-steps-back.dreamwidth.org/)  

  * [Credits and Portraits of Characters](http://gonerunningaway.dreamwidth.org/5257.html), made by [](http://five-steps-back.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**five_steps_back**](http://five-steps-back.dreamwidth.org/)




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